Dublin Convention

The Dublin Convention was signed in Dublin on 15 June 1990 and entered into force on 1 September 1997. Its core purpose was to prevent two problems in the European asylum system: "asylum shopping," where applicants lodged claims in several member states, and "refugees in orbit," where no state accepted responsibility for examining a claim. The Convention established a hierarchy of criteria — family links, prior visas or residence permits, and finally the state of first irregular entry — to identify a single member state responsible for each asylum application.

The original Convention was superseded by Regulation (EC) No 343/2003 ("Dublin II"), which folded the rules into EU law, and later by Regulation (EU) No 604/2013 ("Dublin III"), still in force at the time of writing. Together with the Eurodac fingerprint database, the Dublin system allows authorities to identify where an applicant first entered the Schengen/EU area and to transfer them back to that state.

The framework has been heavily criticised for placing disproportionate burdens on frontline states such as Greece, Italy, Malta, and Spain. In M.S.S. v. Belgium and Greece (European Court of Human Rights, 21 January 2011) and N.S. v. Secretary of State for the Home Department (CJEU, 21 December 2011), courts ruled that member states cannot transfer applicants to countries where they would face systemic deficiencies in asylum procedures or inhuman and degrading treatment.

During the 2015–2016 migration crisis the system effectively broke down, prompting Germany to suspend Dublin returns for Syrian applicants. The European Commission has since proposed replacing Dublin III with a new Pact on Migration and Asylum, which EU institutions adopted in 2024, introducing a "solidarity mechanism" for relocation or financial contributions alongside revised responsibility rules.